'Must be strange.'
Kyle looked up to see one of the other agents standing over the cubicle wall. It was Agent What'shisname, the one everyone called Scooter, of all absurd things – Scooter, with the eager eyes and constant snacking on sugared carbs.
Kyle slid the ID back into his pocket. 'Strange?'
'Returning to fieldwork, I mean. After all that time.'
'Miami was fieldwork,' Kyle said, salting his speech with a dash of Siegel's New Yawk attitude and patois.
'I hear you. Didn't mean to imply anything,' What'shisname said. Kyle just stared and let the awkwardness hang like a sheet of glass between them. 'All right, well… you need anything before I head out?'
'From you?' Kyle said.
'Well, yeah.'
'No thanks, Scooter. I'm all set.'
Max Siegel was going to be antisocial. Kyle had decided that before he'd arrived. Let the other agents coo over baby pictures and share microwave popcorn in the break room. The wider the berth they gave him around here, the more he could get done, and the more secure his masquerade.
That's why he liked after hours so much. He'd already spent most of the previous night right there at the office, sucking up everything there was to know about the Eighteenth Street shooting. Tonight, he focused on crime-scene photos and anything to do with the shooter's methods. His profile was shaping up nicely.
Certain words kept coming to mind as he worked. 'Clean.' 'Detached.' 'Professional.' There had been no specific calling card from this killer, and none of the 'come and get me' gamesmanship you so often saw with these things. It was almost sterile – homicide from 262 yards, which was an absolute yawn from Kyle's perspective, even if the shock and awe of it, to borrow a phrase from the newspapers, were rather elegantly rendered.
He worked for several hours, even lost track of time, until a ringing phone somewhere broke the silence in the office. Kyle didn't think too much about it, but then his own line went off a minute later.
'Agent Siegel,' he answered, with a smile in his voice, though not on his face.
'This is Jamieson, over in Communications. We just got a homicide report from MPD. Looks like there's been another sniper attack. Up in the Woodley Park area this time.'
Kyle didn't hesitate. He stood up and shrugged on his jacket. 'Where am I going?' he said. 'Exactly where?'
A few minutes later, he was pulling out of the parking garage and driving on Mass Avenue at around sixty. The sooner he got up there, the sooner he could head off Metro Police, who were no doubt fouling up his crime scene at that very moment.
And more important – Ladies and Gentlemen, start your engines – this was the moment he'd been waiting for. With any luck, it was time for Alex Cross and Max Siegel to meet.
Chapter 23
I WAS AT home when I got the call about the latest sniper murder near Woodley Park.
'Detective Cross? It's Sergeant Ed Fleischman from Two D. We've got a nasty homicide up here, very possible sniper fire.'
'Who's the deceased?' I asked.
'Mel Dlouhy, sir. That's why I called you. He fits right into the mold on your case.'
Dlouhy was currently out on bail but still at the center of what looked to be one of the biggest insider tax scandals in U.S. history. The allegations were that he'd used his position in the District's IRS office to funnel tens of millions in taxpayer dollars to himself, his family, and his friends, usually through nonprofit children's charities that didn't actually exist.
Another sniper incident, and another bad guy right out of the headlines – we had a pattern.
The case had just jumped to a new level, too. I was determined we'd get this right from the very start. If it had to be a circus, I could at least try to make sure it was my circus.
'Where are you?' I asked the sergeant.
'Thirty-second, just off of Cleveland Avenue, sir. You know the area?'
'I do.'
Second District was the only one in the city with zero homicides in the last calendar year. So much for that statistic. I could already feel the neighborhood panic going up.
'Did the fire board get there?'
'Yes, sir. The victim's confirmed dead.'
'And the house is clear?' I asked.
'We ran a protective sweep, and Mrs. Dlouhy's with us now. I can ask for consent to search if you want.'
'No. If anyone's inside, I want them out. Call DC Mobile Crime. They can start photographing, but nobody touches anything until I get there,' I told Sergeant Fleischman. 'Do you have any idea where the shots came from yet?'
'Either the backyard, or the neighbor's place behind that. Nobody's home over there,' Fleischman told me.
'Okay. Set up a command post on the street – not in the yard, Sergeant. I want officers at the front and back doors, and another at the neighbor's house. Anyone wants to get into either place, they go through you first – and then the answer is no. Not until I'm on-site. This is an MPD crime scene, and I'm ranking Homicide. You're going to see FBI, ATF, maybe the chief, too. He lives a lot closer than I do. Tell him to call me in the car if he wants.'
'Anything else, Detective?' Fleischman sounded just a little overwhelmed. Not that I blamed him. Most 2D officers aren't used to this kind of thing.
'Yeah, talk to your first responders. I don't want any jaw jacking with the press or the neighbors – no one. As far as your guys are concerned, they haven't seen a thing, they don't know a thing. Just keep the whole place locked down tight until I'm there.'
'I'll try,' he said.
'No, Sergeant. You'll just do it. Trust me – we have to keep this thing locked down tight.'
Chapter 24
UNFORTUNATELY THE PRESS was going berserk when I got there. Dozens of cameras were jockeying for an angle on Mel and Nina Dlouhy's white stone house, either out front at the barriers that Sergeant Ed Fleischman had established, or over on Thirty-first, where a separate detail had been dispatched just to keep people from coming in through the back, which they certainly would do.
Most of the looky-loos on the street, if they weren't press, were probably wandering up from Cleveland Avenue. The neighbors seemed to have stayed home. I could see silhouettes in the windows up and down the block as I drove in. I signed up with crime-scene attendance and immediately ordered a canvassing detail to start knocking on doors.
Sampson met me at the scene, straight from a faculty thing at Georgetown, where his wife, Billie, taught nursing. 'Can't say I'm glad this happened,' he told me, 'but, shit, how much wine and cheese can a man eat in one lifetime?'
We started in the living room, where the Dlouhys had reportedly been watching an episode of The Closer. The TV was still on, ironically with a live news shot of the house now. 'That's creepy,' said Sampson. 'The press like to talk about invasion of privacy – except when they're doing the invading.'
Mrs. Dlouhy's initial statement was that she'd heard a tinkle of glass, looked over at the broken window, and only then noticed her husband's head slumped over with his eyes wide open in the recliner next to hers. I could still hear her crying in the kitchen with one of our counselors, and my heart went out to her some. What a nightmare.
Mel Dlouhy was still sitting in his chair. The single bullet wound in his temple looked relatively clean, with a
